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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28450611">Bad Things Happen To Several Researchers At An Unethical, Underground Genetic Experimentation Facility</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TTMIYH/pseuds/TTMIYH'>TTMIYH</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Homestuck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(Technically Envenoming But I Couldn't Get A Non-Venom (Symbiote) Tag), Addiction, Body Horror, Cheating, Clone Sex, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Dubious Ethics, Dubious Morality, Dubious Science, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, F/M, Honey, Hybrids, Lima Syndrome, M/M, Mad Science, Mad Scientists, Messy, Mind Control, Multi, Partial Mind Control, Pheromones, Poisoning, Psionic Sex, Psionics, Seduction, Sex Pollen, Stockholm Syndrome</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:28:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,491</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28450611</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TTMIYH/pseuds/TTMIYH</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><span>"It's always a treat to get to see one of these big fellas getting born. Approximate proportions, 25% donor material, 70% ancestral material, 5% foreign material. Twenty-second generation insectoid. More thorough genetic sequencing will need to be done when he's calmed down a bit - look at those talons! I wouldn't want to be on the other end of <em>that</em>."</span> Aradia narrated into her transcriber, leaning forward, resting her elbows on the flat surface next to the environmental control panel. <span>"What a beauty."</span></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jade Harley/Jade Harley, Jane Crocker/Feferi Peixes, Kurloz Makara/Kankri Vantas, Meulin Leijon/Kurloz Makara, Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam, Sollux Captor/Aradia Megido</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. ARADIA 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><span class="aradia">"Subject is... agitated. Not distressed, I don't think."</span> Aradia said, quietly, into her transcriber. Click, off the record. <span class="aradia">"Beautiful plumage, though. Is it plumage if it's a bee? Oh, who cares."</span> Click, back on. <span class="aradia">"But agitated. Emerged from cocoon-like structure approximately 15 hours ago, spent the intervening time self-grooming, is now exploring enclosure."</span> With her peripheral vision, she watched the words write themselves onto the computer screen, and then with the rest of her eyesight, she watched through the one-way mirror, bright lights burning at the edges of her camera frame.</p><p><span class="aradia">"It's always a treat to get to see one of these big fellas getting born. Approximate proportions, 25% donor material, 70% ancestral material, 5% foreign material. Twenty-second generation insectoid. More thorough genetic sequencing will need to be done when he's calmed down a bit - look at those talons! I wouldn't want to be on the other end of <em>that</em>."</span> Aradia narrated into her transcriber, leaning forward, resting her elbows on the flat surface next to the environmental control panel. <span class="aradia">"What a beauty."</span></p><p><span class="jane">"I'm not sure I'd consider <em>that</em> to be beautiful. Don't try to get too in their heads, Aradia."</span> came an unwanted voice from behind her, the sealed airlock door hissing open, then shut. <span class="span">"They're weapons and products, nothing more."</span> Jane Crocker, one of their head financiers, said, her voice dripping with droll professionalism. Aradia couldn't help but roll her eyes, and then adjust her labcoat.</p><p><span class="aradia">"I'm allowed to be proud of my work, Mrs. Crocker. You've never funded a particularly beautiful gun before?"</span> Aradia asked, flipping around, leaning back on her elbows now, in a slightly uncomfortable position that still let her face Jane. <span class="aradia">"Or do you just face everything with the same neutral... face?"</span></p><p><span class="jane">"Yes."</span> Jane replied, causing Aradia to furrow her brow in frustration. Not even a straight answer, and Jane could tell how much it was bothering her, judging by the smug grin on her face. One day, when Aradia decides to blow the NDA open on this place, Jane would get hers, but for now, Aradia just sighed and rolled back around to facing the new creation. <span class="jane">"Don't get too attached, now. You know the life expectancy on these things."</span></p><p><span class="aradia">"Yeah yeah, life expectancy shlife expectancy. I worked hard on this little fella, at least let me appreciate his first fully-molted breaths. Least you could do, party pooper."</span> Aradia shot back, waving Jane off with her hand. The bepantsuit'd woman shrugged (not that Aradia saw), made a noncommittal noise, and left the way she came - through the airlock. <span class="aradia">"Buzz off, bitch."</span> Aradia murmured under her breath, meeting herself with a chuckle. <span class="aradia">"Heh. Buzz off. Get it? Like a... bee. Buzz off, like a bee. I'm funny."</span></p><p>Working at Section 0 had its perks, at least. Underneath her labcoat, she was allowed to wear her own clothes, which was how she got away with wearing Slayer and Pantera t-shirts to an ostensibly government job. Sure, she needed to get naked every time she was needed in an enclosure, and that would be soon enough, but this was far better when compared to her previous job. Plus, the job security? The pay? Absolutely worth the price of spending all her time working with and tending to horrific genetic monstrosities meant to be sold off to the highest bidder to engage in the indiscriminate slaughter of human beings or to use their byproducts as some kind of narcotic. Boy, would her tell-all be crazy or what? Your taxpayer money at work.</p><p>Actually, thinking about it, compared to a new jet fighter or whatever this was probably the more ethical use of Aradia's taxpayer money.</p><p>It was always rather astounding at the E-Series's metamorphosis...es? Metamorphosii? Metamorphoses? Between the larval, pupal, and imago stages. What started off as what was, really, a very large caterpillar of some kind, with stunted little wings and a fine layer of reddish-black fur and two blunt horns, had turned into... This... <em>thing</em>. Really, the amount of additional biomass was itself kind of astounding - she knew enough about insects to know that they essentially turned into protein soup in their chrysalis, but it was so difficult to square the circle between the runty little dog-sized grub and <em>this</em>.</p><p>Aradia took a deep breath. No more time to burn holding off the inevitable. She pulled the transcriber to her mouth and spoke. <span class="aradia">"I'm about to put on my personal protective equipment, decontaminate, and enter E-22's enclosure."</span> Click, back off, and then over to the opposite direction that Jane left in, dimming the lights even further on her way out to make sure that the creature's compound eyes couldn't get a view of anything outside its little world. Was it perhaps a little bit ethically dubious to be containing a living, mostly-sentient creature to a simulated environment and leading it to believe that was its entire life? Yes. But no worse than anything else they were doing here, so it was fine!</p><p>Plus, imagining any of the more stable E-series ancestors making it out among the populace... That would be. Bad.</p><p>Yeah, none of that.</p><p>She stepped out into the observation hallway, down it, using the handrails to ensure she could make it by in the dark. At this point, she knew the layout of this particular wing with her eyes shut, but holding onto the handrail always made her feel a little bit more secure, a little bit more grounded. People who knew her primarily by her devil-may-care attitude may have found this odd, but a girl's gotta have her mysteries sometimes, doesn't she? The cold metal under her hand made her feel a little bit more attached to the building, like without it, she might've blown away.</p><p>The decontamination chamber awaited.</p><p>Stepping out of her labcoat, and then everything underneath, it was startling how quickly she grew used to semi-regularly getting naked for her job. All of her clothing, and the couple of bracelets she had on, went into a mechanized cubby. They'd be sterilized and washed while she was inside, and returned to her warm and clean and dry. The little perks. Inside the first chamber of the chamber (or chamber-chamber, for short), where she'd be hosed down and sprayed with various arcane disinfectants, of which it was her job to understand exactly zero of them. It was not very comfortable, but, well, she'd gotten used to cold showers at this point.</p><p>It was the blowing of warm, clean air over her that always sucked more than the sterilizing spray, with the liquid on her body evaporating uncomfortably, leaving behind trails of ice cold along her peach fuzz, wicking away all the precious body heat that her chubby tried to keep on her. Blech. Plus, she wasn't allowed to wear any body jewelry here - something something difficult to clean and sterilize something yadda yadda - and that sucked just as hardcore.</p><p>The second chamber actually contained the PPE she needed to wear: a slightly obnoxious-to-get-on bodysuit type getup in black and maroon first. She slipped it on, loose at first, and then clamped the sealing collar (there was a technical term for it, but it was basically a collar, let's not mince words here) around her neck and twisted a crank on it. She tried not to wrinkle her nose as the air vented out from the inside of the suit and directly into her face, almost vacuum sealing it to her skin, and then turned the sealing collar around so she wouldn't be tempted to fiddle with the crank and accidentally vent the seal while she was in the enclosure of a dangerous insect-human hybrid.</p><p>Then, second layer. This one was a bit more like a traditional hazmat suit, without the weird and, in Aradia's opinion, slightly fetishy, high-tech additions that the undersuit provided. Little mechanical arms in the walls helped hold things in place. Zippers, clasps, stuff tucked into other stuff, more bands sealing the suit at the wrist and ankles. She didn't know how all this shit worked, only her procedures and how to put things on. Stuff got attached to other stuff, tucked into other stuff, yadda yadda, and then she was Safe from the outside world, dangerous as it was. Another small cubby opened up on the other side of the decontamination chamber, and a fresh, sterile transcriber was provided and quickly attuned to the local frequency, along with the microphone inside the head of the hazmat suit.</p><p>For about a minute, while all the air was cycled out, Aradia fiddled with the knobs of the microphone and made astronaut sounds. There was a hiss, and into the final chamber she went. This one was to ensure no particulate matter, airborne intoxicants, or other such substances from the subjects made it out to the rest of the world, and contained a suitcase of sterilized equipment for her to pick up and heft along with her. Thankfully, working this job had given her a bit more muscle mass than she came in with, although she wasn't really expecting it to involve nearly as much heavy lifting as it had.</p><p>Hissssssss.</p><p>There was no way to sneak into one of the enclosures unless the bioweapon in question was completely blind and also deaf, which was not out of the question, but also, in this instance, not correct. While the creature didn't possess ears in the traditional sense, his dizzying array of antennae provided enough sensitivity to vibration that he was able to turn his head to face Aradia either way, making her heart stop in her chest for a moment.</p><p>God, he was even prettier up close. The on-site psychiatrist recommended not thinking about their creations as people, with things like "rights", which, well, she didn't, but still, no amount of therapy could prevent her from getting some sort of fluttery feeling at such a specimen.</p><p>He stood about two and a half meters tall, almost double Aradia's height, although that was only when he was stretched out completely - so really, guesstimations right now. His legs, somewhere awkwardly between human and bug, with zygodactyl talons uprooting small chunks of dirt as he walked. Skinny, double-kneed calves and shins and some other part that she couldn't really place, forming a rough Z shape, with his thighs being considerably larger and fuzzier, almost like the way you had the scaly legs sticking out of the bottom of a chicken. They creased and uncreased, furled and unfurled, barely able to keep his weight upright as he wobbled towards her, curious as all.</p><p>She stood ramrod still after gently putting her stuff down on the ground. <span class="aradia">"Subject is approaching rapidly. Beautiful plumage."</span> She repeated into her transcriber through her mic. She felt bad for the people who had to have the thicker, more hazmatty PPE, fitted with lining to prevent transmission of electromagnetic frequency through the equipment. They'd have to just remember all her observations, while she got to set it down and talk to herself.</p><p>The creature's "plumage" was a bit more like fur than feathers, but it still possessed a layer of dazzling, shimmering iridescence that she just couldn't let go of. His body was malformed, yes, in a way that would've been distressing to anyone else, with an overly rotund torso, two sets of skinny, chickenlike arms, the top set similarly over-jointed as his legs, the bottom one shrunken and twisted into a significantly more useless pair of graspers. His mouth combined the worst parts of an insect's mandibles and a human's jaw, jointed and hinged at the wrong places, bony, toothy growths emerging from places where they were effectively useless for chewing food (but probably fairly useful as a defensive mechanism). His fuzz, mostly bright yellow and black, bounced light in a way that made him hard to look at directly, his eyes a clear set of insectoid compound eyes squeezed into four normal human eyeholes, occasionally twitching and squishing to look at Aradia.</p><p>She put her hands up as nonthreateningly as possible as he approached, using his upper arms to keep steady. An endless stream of gooey, golden-ish saliva dribbled from between his mandibles, and Aradia could absolutely not ignore the gigantic, swollen dual-ovipositor that had grown out of what used to be a stinger on the older generations.</p><p>Wait.</p><p>Ovipositor?</p><p>Was the creature... No way. Couldn't be. It would certainly explain a lot, but, no, almost impossible.</p><p>The creature loomed over Aradia, chittering and sniffing and huffing as his graspers reached out from the middle of his torso, idly prodding and feeling at her PPE. <span class="aradia">"Easy there, boy. I'm safe."</span> She spoke into her external mic, as quietly and soothingly as she could manage. Switch feeds. <span class="aradia">"To note: Subject's lower abdomen appears considerably more swollen than prior generations, and presence of what appears to be an ovipositor-like structure has replaced the stinger present on prior three generations. Concerned that somehow our boy has pupated into what would effectively be a queen bee. Exciting, but also has dangerous ramifications. He's watching me speak through the visor, I'm going to switch back to the external feed."</span></p><p>She kept her hands held up, letting him get so dangerously close to ripping her PPE to shreds - his claws were certainly sharp enough to do so. It had only happened once before, back when Aradia was new, and didn't know how to handle the experiments she was dealing with, and she had gotten so close to death that it was honestly rather exciting. Just stay calm. They're animals, but smarter. They understand that you're not threatening.</p><p>The last thing Aradia wanted was to expose herself to the air in here. Not only was it humid and warm as all get-out (making Aradia uncomfortably sweaty through her undersuit), but it was just chock full of pollen, thanks to all the flowers, grasses, and trees that had been planted into the enclosure for the enrichment of the experiments. She wasn't allergic allergic, but it still wouldn't be a good time to get her lungs gunked up, not the least of which being that if she was being exposed to the air, she was also being exposed to the creature in a way that was far more intimate than she was comfortable with. When high concentrations of airborne pollen proved to be effective for larger growing experiments in the E-series, they had begun pumping more and more in, and never stopped.</p><p>The air in here could choke someone, if you weren't prepared.</p><p>Thankfully, Aradia was. <span class="aradia">"See? I'm fine, fella. I won't hurt you."</span> Aradia said, unsure if the creature could actually understand her in a way that mattered. Maybe he could, maybe he couldn't - she knew they had vestigial ear structures, and it's possible that it had developed in E-22 to the point where he might be able to interpret noises in a way you or I would be more familiar with, but nobody was willing to take a scalpel to the creatures until they were dead, almost always of old age. Aradia gently began to reach forward, keeping her hands raised high in the air. <span class="aradia">"We're fine, aren't we, big fella? Can I get a feel on that?"</span> She asked, quietly, putting her hands on E-22's upper shoulder joints as slowly as possible.</p><p>He let her. His graspers reached out, gently grabbing for Aradia's visor, making clicking sounds as they tapped against the plexiglass. <span class="aradia">"Easy there, big fella, don't want you ripping anything..."</span> She murmured, running her fingers through his pollen-covered fuzz, watching as little sprinklings and dustings sprayed off of it with the slightest motion, sending pollen into the air.</p><p>Looming over her, just absolutely looming, she could feel the sticky, heavy heat of his drool hitting the top of her PPE, sliding down the front and starting to roll over her visor. It was messy, sticky work, but somebody had to do it. The drool had never been this <em>viscous</em> before, sticky, gloppy, almost like... Oh.</p><p>Oh.</p><p>E-22 bent over, almost like he was encasing Aradia, and she realized rather suddenly that she had nowhere she could go if this thing decided it wanted to rip her out of her suit like candy in a wrapper. This <em>honey-producing</em> thing, regurgitating honey <em>onto</em> her. Onto her bright yellow PPE. She continued to run her hands <em>slowly, so slowly</em> down into his fuzz, and when she started to pull back, his graspers <em>tightened</em> around her head like a clamp. <span class="aradia">"Easy there, champ..."</span> She murmured quietly to the external feed.</p><p><span class="sollux">"<em>Stay</em>"</span>, it hissed back.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. JANE 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jane's high heels clicked along the tile floor, bright red - not stilettos, she had a little more sense than that, at least in a work environment with dangerous genetic monstrosities potentially able to burst out at any moment. To say she was afraid of the possibility would be burying the lede a little bit. No, Jane Crocker was not afraid of things. Yes, she was worried about the public backlash if any of Section 0's experiments were to become public knowledge for whatever reason. Yes, she was a bit concerned about the thought of dying (or worse). Like most rational human beings, Jane Crocker was attached to her mortality, and very much did not like to lose it. She did, in her sleeping moments, dread the thought on occasion, of passing on beyond this mortal coil.</p><p>None of that meant she was afraid of the monsters in Section 0.</p><p>She was cautious. She adjusted her glasses and peeked in through the semi-frosted windows through various airlocks. There were <em>so</em> many airlocks, steel and titanium reinforced airlocks, triple-thick, multi-chambered, and that wasn't even getting into the budget catastrophe that was the decontamination chambers. Was there a good reason for them to be as complex as they were? So many moving parts meant one more variable that one of the untrustworthy chaff beneath her could mess up and cause a containment breach through. Why were traditional hazmat suits not functional, why did the agency require those ridiculous undersuits that her refusal to wear meant she could never peek into the depths of those containment chambers? Not that she wanted to, it was just these sorts of questions that burned at her brain whenever she looked too deep.</p><p>There, in chamber K-9 - unamusingly, <em>not</em> the dog chamber. Goat. Who decided those two researchers were allowed to-- you know what? No. This is not happening under her management. She slapped her palm against the airlock button, sighing as it slowly hissed open, giving them more than enough time to hear her coming and try to pretend they weren't up to anything. She adjusted her top, adjusted her bottom, and stepped in, letting the door seal itself shut behind her, the pressure-induced winds of the various mechanisms almost blowing her perfect hair out of place.</p><p><span class="jane">"You two."</span> Jane said, stern painted all over her face in various directions. She reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose, squinting her eyes shut in aggravation. <span class="jane">"Please stop."</span></p><p><span class="kankri">"Sorry."</span> <span class="meulin">"Sorry, Mrs. Crocker."</span> They both said, sheepishly, letting go of their hands and stepping a couple of feet away from each other. The airlock door squeezed shut behind Jane.</p><p><span class="jane">"Look, I'm already being as lenient as I can. I'm letting you two date, outside of the recommendations and mandates of the Section 13 broader encompassing guidelines. I let you two take lunch breaks simultaneously and I even told you where the single futzy camera in the lunchroom is."</span> Jane rolled, thoroughly relitigating the many blind eyes she turns because, frankly, keeping an organization this scale running with competent employees is an exercise in madness. Two years between each hire, minimum. She couldn't afford to lose any of them - not that she'd tell them that. <span class="jane">"Please, just try to stay focused and not make out in the actual labs themselves. You know everything is recorded and that we keep records for six months. Please tell me that if I go and look at those security feeds, that today will be the first day I catch you two canoodling?"</span></p><p>The girl shook her head vigorously. <span class="meulin">"Yes, Mrs. Crocker. First time. Honest."</span></p><p>Jane, of course, did not believe her. But she wasn't going to embarrass her any more than she already had. Nor was she going to check the security footage - in fact, she was more likely to go back and delete it for just this room. But then again, maybe she wouldn't. She'd have to think and then flip a coin about it later in the day. <span class="jane">"Good. Please don't let me catch it happening again."</span> She stated bluntly. She was definitely more of a woman of statements than she was a woman of questions, or at least, she tried to be.</p><p>Two years per new hire, on average. Couldn't afford to fire one of them right now. At least she made back her investment regularly, but damn these government contracts.</p><p>She turned her head to look at the specimen in its alcove. Rocky environment, like a manmade cave. The dim lights made it impossible to see them, but considering this was the <em>psionic</em> experimentation room, you would forgive Jane for being a little cautious and not staring directly at the damn thing. Of course, all the people involved assured her that the lead-████ alloy would be enough to block "psionic waves" (Jane wouldn't have believed them when they insisted they were real if she hadn't bore witness to psychic phenomena herself). The damn thing's glowing eyes gave her the creeps, and the fact that it was occupying itself by lighting various patches of grass on fire with nothing more than the force of its brain made her extremely reluctant to pay it any more attention than necessary.</p><p>Was Jane willing to gamble that the thing could see them anyway? Or, somehow, detect them with its weird brain? No, she was not - she was not a gambling woman, and did not like making bets that there was at all a probability she could lose. She did not like that the lead-whatever in the glass was only theoretically capable of blocking its weird waveforms from hitting her brain. And don't even get her started on the possibility that it could be <em>influencing</em> her, or anyone else, for that matter. If one of these things could somehow mind control people she'd be pulling the emergency flush on the base faster than you could say "Deadly Neurotoxin". Fuck it, all up in flames. Would be better than letting one of those things into the general population.</p><p><span class="meulin">"You okay, Mrs. Crocker?"</span> The girl asked nervously. Jane snapped her head over to her and then made a little disgusted noise as a twitch worked its way up her spine.</p><p><span class="jane">"Just peachy. Had a weird vibe. Going to need a smoke soon, you know how it is."</span> Jane answered, and the girl nodded. Yes, Jane knew she was regularly smoking weed, but she also knew how to interpret drug test results. So long as she wasn't <em>coming into work</em> high, why bother getting rid of a useful asset? So, she let her do as she wished. Jane rolled her shoulders, cracking them one after the other, and turned around to leave. <span class="jane">"Remember, no canoodling."</span></p><p><span class="meulin">"Yes, Mrs. Crocker! No canoodling whatsoever. None here."</span> She replied, her usual chipper self stiffened a little bit by Jane's presence (understandably so). The guy of the duo remained as taciturn as he always was around her. She was never sure why, she had seen security tapes where he's just a regular chatterbox, completely unable to shut himself up. Oh well. Questions for a later day, she had work to be getting to. She walked out, past the obnoxious fucking airlock, and then out the door, back into the hallway.</p><p>Hopefully, there would be no other chambers where her intervention would be necessary. Y-12, J-33, Q-100, passing by chamber after chamber, until she reached the alphas. And every one she passed, she took a little peek in through the airlock windows, and found nothing out of the ordinary.</p><p>By all accounts, it was a completely ordinary day at work in Section 0.</p><p>Epsilon-12. She was sure if she was one of the other researchers, she would've given it a name by now, but thankfully, she was not a researcher, she was a financier and CEO and manager and all these other things that did not require dirtying her hands in the grunt work. Past the airlock, yadda yadda, yawn. She always told her underlings to not think of them as people, they're weapons, they're products, they're things to be bought and sold, don't get attached.</p><p>But if she had to get attached, even a little bit, it would be to Epsilon-12. Into that lab, the monitoring equipment beeping, the transcriber feed still attached from yesterday's workers. Epsilon-12 was given a bit more alone time than the others. She didn't have a main researcher assigned, just people who rotated in and out, for practical purposes.</p><p>Jane wasn't an idiot. She could tell why every researcher that spent too long with Epsilon-12 fell in love with her, which is why she restricted her visits to once a week, because she wasn't an idiot. After all, that was what she was <em>made</em> for. A literal love bomb. Remember those old CIA experiments where they tried to create a gay bomb but then scrapped the project because it ostensibly didn't work? Surprise, your taxpayer dollars actually kept going to that one, it just got shuffled to Section 0.</p><p>Yeah, Jane laughed a little bit when she found out, too. If only the CIA knew what was going down here, they'd throw all kinds of fits.</p><p>Epsilon-12 looked back at Jane through the mirror. They never bothered changing the light levels here. She had quickly intuited that she was captive, somehow, and started banging on the glass, looking directly at people, doing all sorts of impossible things even with the lead-whatzit shielding. So they didn't bother, and saved the money for some other enclosure - or at least, that was what they told her when she joined in on Section 0 nine years ago, when it was Epsilon-7. She was sure it was bullshit, but there were better places to burn money, and the time it would take to psionic-proof her enclosure would be too much considering the time delay between generations and the rate of genetic degradation once one died.</p><p>No matter how deep they froze it, these things just wanted to shake themselves apart on a cellular level. No amount of temperature above absolute zero seemed to stop it for long. There was just not enough time between Epsilons to psychic-proof the place, and that was okay, it was whatever. It wasn't <em>okay</em> okay, but that was what Section 0 was about - managing compromises.</p><p>Jane leaned on a table, elbows down, chin on her hands, while Epsilon-12 looked back at her. If there was any one barely-contained monstrosity here, she was glad it was this one. No claws, no talons, no additional appendages outside of two small, bony nubs underneath her skin of her forehead, and she had seen those on plenty of mallrats and skater punks before. No wings to fly away with, no anomalous ability to hover off the ground, no bursts of strength or speed. In fact, in testing, she's proved about as agile and strong as a toddler, despite her adult size and appearance. Absolutely feeble. You could poke a hole in her with your hand. Kind of adorable, even.</p><p>Epsilon-12 pushed her hands against the glass, right up to Jane. She did have webbed fingers, that was a little notable, Jane supposed, and those gorgeous pink eyes, and tangled long hair that tied itself in so many knots that the researchers had to regularly go in to brush them out of her. And gills on her neck and ribs that fluttered, in and out, revealing dark fuchsia membranes beneath with every breath. She never had to open her mouth to breathe, but she did open her mouth to smile, with perhaps her only weapon - a disconcerting amount of razor sharp teeth in row after row. In all other respects, a healthy, if pallid and clammy, adult woman in appearance.</p><p>She didn't even have genitalia, just what looked like a smooth sheet that could be slightly unfolded to let her... you know. So what made her so dangerous?</p><p>Well, like Jane had mentioned.</p><p>Love bomb.</p><p>Pheromones and psionics. Modified sweat glands that produced this vile-smelling aphrodisiac, one that they regularly collected through condensators in the vents, bottled, and sold off. A little bit of "glamour", that supposedly being hit with the full brunt of made her look like the most attractive person in the world to you. And Jane knew for a fact that she was a only slightly psychic fish lady, so that sort of trickery would never work on her. Jane was very much not into fish people, after all, although she did admire Epsilon-12 somewhat for her gracefulness, how she could be so useful to their operation without being a lethal murder machine. She couldn't even perform the mildest feats of TK. No direct telepathic communication. No clairvoyance, pyro, cyro, or electrokinesis, no rapid regeneration, no nothing.</p><p>No claws, no talons, no additional appendages.</p><p>Weak. Feeble. Profitable.</p><p>Jane got up, promptly walking her way to the decontamination chamber, and slammed on the emergency vent. All the doors in the three decontamination chambers began to hiss and shudder open, and when a single blare of alarm rang out, she entered in the override and punched the alarm panel hard enough to break it.</p><p>A foul miasma began to waft itself into her nose. She kept walking, into Epsilon-12's enclosure.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. MEULIN & KANKRI 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kankri sighed, his entire body visibly deflating once Jane left their assigned research chamber, reaching out to gently take hold of Meulin's hand. <span class="kankri">"Sorry about that. I really should have been able to see her coming, and now you might get a demerit or something stupid like that, and it's probably going to be my fault. Sorry."</span></p><p>Meulin gave him a little swat with her free hand. <span class="meulin">"Don't worry about it. If I cared too much about getting caught I would've tuned to her frequency. It's not like we have anything to do today, anyway."</span></p><p>And indeed they didn't - nor did they, typically. It was part of why the two of them got the job in the first place. Yeah, sure, they were both watching a monstrous bioweapon with psionic powers capable of doing any number of horrific things to a human body, but it paid RIDICULOUSLY well, and the particular line they were assigned to happened to be pretty quiet and unassuming. All they'd need to do is keep this up for another couple of years and then they could retire and live the rest of their lives out at the age of 34 with more than enough money in the bank to ensure they'd have everything they'd ever need forever. A simple plan, what could <em>possibly</em> go wrong?</p><p>There was, of course, more than just "needing a pair of eyes to watch the K-Line" for why they got hired. The qualifications for this sort of place were pretty stringent, and revolved around a strange battery of tests once they passed the initial winnowing of the field. Kankri, apparently, ranked high on some sort of "psionic resistance index", using whatever strange measuring method they used. It involved getting electrodes strapped to his head and shown a bunch of flashing images that his brain still doesn't remember really what they were. It had kind of all blurred into static, but, suffice to say, his aphantasia meant that it was usually like that anyway.</p><p>As for Meulin, apparently, she was latently telepathic! Who knew? It definitely explained her lifelong history of dangerous intrusive thoughts, some strange childhood incidences, and how she was still capable of hearing people even despite her degenerative ear condition rendering her permanently deafened by the age of 24. To be fair to Section 0, though, this was due to them using her for tests and teaching her how to develop her "abilities", and for that, she was also kind of stuck in a grateful state. Unlike Kankri, she did feel a little bit of resistance towards the thought of eventually leaving. What if there were better things they could teach her? What if, like the strange creature in front of them, she could eventually learn how to set things on fire with nothing more than her brain?</p><p>Wouldn't that be <em>sooo</em> cool?</p><p>Meulin let go of Kankri's hand, gently rubbing at her scalp with her fingertips. There were two small, bony protrusions that ached every so often, sort of like horns, bumping out under the surface of her skull. They had been there as far as she could remember, but honing her abilities had only made them more prominent, which helpfully gave her the ability to style her hair around them to make them look almost like cat ears. Her combination hearing aids/psionic filters gently whined with feedback, tuned to K-9's primary psionic wavelength in case his thoughts ever got loud enough to break through the shielding. Right now, though? Just the psychic equivalent of white noise.</p><p><span class="kankri">"You doing alright?"</span> Kankri asked, leaning against one of the consoles, trying his best to not put his elbows on anything important. He wasn't much of a researcher, not even in an official capacity. Meulin was the person actually doing the work, while he was, at best, an assistant, at worst, a guinea pig to let Meulin test her powers on. Not that he minded very much - there was a sort of otherwise unaccomplishable intimacy that was only attainable by literally letting someone inside your head, and the more he let her test on him, the more likely she'd break through his psionic resistance and they'd be able to connect on a way that very few other people would have the opportunity to do. It was so interesting, and somewhat romantic. <span class="kankri">"You look a little pale. Did Mrs. Crocker's presence disrupt your abilities, or something of the sort? Do your hearing aids need new batteries?"</span></p><p>Meulin waved him off gently with one hand. Before, when they had first met, he spoke with much less tact about the subject of her disability, and at length - a couple of tongue lashings and the occasional physical bapping on the head had steadily disabused him of those notions. And Meulin definitely <em>thought</em> that Kankri should've been nicer to her, but as far as she was aware, she was only a receiver, not a sender. There was so much interesting knowledge to gather about psionics, and most of it was redacted. Senders did exist, but, at least according to the few files Meulin was allowed to read, were exponentially more rare than receivers. And people able to manifest telekinetic phenomena? Forget about it.</p><p>Maybe that was why she stuck around despite the horrific ethical abuses Section 0 regularly committed while creating their weapons. Being able to tune herself to thoughts meant she'd never be truly deaf. Maybe, somewhere in her brain, she considered that helping Section 0 do their psychic research would eventually help more people like her. <span class="meulin">"Yeah, no, I'm fine, I just have a headache? It's really fuzzy."</span></p><p>If Kankri was a psionic, he would've noticed the thought waves in the room getting louder. If Meulin had a better sense of volume, she might've too. Pity neither of them did. <span class="kankri">"Should we vent some anesthetic into the K-9 entity's resting chamber? Maybe it's starting to-"</span></p><p><span class="meulin">"No!"</span> Meulin shouted. She never had a good control over the volume of her voice at the best of times, much less now, when the noise in her head was starting to overwhelm her ability to think clearly. It definitely wasn't K-9 - she had heard his thoughts before, and he had a voice, deep and looming like a radio announcer, echoing in your head, telling you what you wanted to hear. This wasn't K-9, it was just... something else. <span class="meulin">"Don't hurt him. It's not him."</span> She whined, stumbling backwards a few steps until collapsing to the ground, clutching the horns on her head with her palms. <span class="meulin">"Just... get me a water bottle, please. I'll be fine. It's not him."</span> She said. She was absolutely certain it wasn't K-9. She knew what K-9 sounded like. There was psionic shielding in place. He was preoccupied with setting small fires in the artificial grass. It wasn't K-9.</p><p>Kankri winced slightly at the sudden volume, but didn't question Meulin's decision. She was, after all, technically his superior, so executive decisions came down to her about whether or not to sedate an experiment. Plus, K-9 was doing fine. Absolutely nothing particularly suspicious, just setting fires, his preferred time-burning activity. He walked past Meulin, looking at her with a little bit of cloying pity. Oh, no, was he being condescending again? No, you're better than that, Kankri, you know that. You're not condescending to people anymore. He popped open the fridge in the back and grabbed a water bottle for Meulin, preemptively opening it for her, and walked back to her, his sneakers soft and clacky against the floor.</p><p>He sat down, passing it to her. After a couple of seconds, when Meulin (whose eyes were screwed shut tightly and hands were grabbing her head) didn't react to it, he grabbed the bottle again and brought it to Meulin's lips. There, now she was getting the picture, latching around the plastic water bottle and thirstily guzzling it down. Kankri tried not to stare as a not insignificant amount of water seemed to make its way past the seal, dripping down Meulin's chin and staining her labcoat's front. Don't stare at her chest, Kankri, you fool around but you already got in trouble once today and it's not the place or time. Eventually, the water bottle was emptied out, but it seemed like about half of it just got dumped on Meulin's front, and her face didn't look any less pained. <span class="kankri">"Meulin, seriously, I'm going to call security, okay? This isn't normal." Kankri suggested. Sure, there was psionic feedback problems, but <em>nothing</em> like this before.</span></p><p><span class="meulin">"No!"</span> Meulin <em>screamed</em>, her fingers digging into her hair, clumping it together between her knuckles. Her eyes opened, tinted with fury, towards Kankri. When did her shirt and labcoat get <em>soaked</em>? Great, it was clinging to her... How obnoxious. Kankri backed away, scuttling like a fearful crab. <span class="meulin">"Just... watch K-9. I'll be fine. Please. I'll be fine. Keep an eye on him for me."</span></p><p><span class="kankri">"Yeah, sure. Okay. As long as you're sure you'll be okay..."</span> Kankri said, getting up, shying away from Meulin (who had begun rocking back and forth on the floor, curled up into a ball), and going to watch K-9. The experiment was based mostly on hominid DNA, but, apparently, horned animals were good conductors of psionic waves, so there were a number of other mammals and a couple of fish dumped into his progenitor's morass, from which K-9 was eventually derived. Kankri also thought he recalled that some of Meulin's DNA was in K-2, but that was two, three years ago, already blurring into a mess in his brain.</p><p>What he did know was that K-9 was tall, about 7 feet without taking the horns into account, which curled another foot up from his head. His body was willowy, almost anorexic in appearance, skin pulled taut over an almost gibbon-like skeleton. Lips thin and narrow, pulled back enough to expose a row of perfectly flat teeth, almost like molars all the way around, with two narrow slits where his nose should've been. His toes had been fused together into a two-toed hoof that made him unsteady on his feet (as if his incredibly disproportionate body didn't do enough for that), with his fingers similarly fused together into two larger digits and a misshapen, swollen thumb. A constant, vague shimmering of the air around him made it obvious that K-9 had to use telekinesis to keep his body up to begin with, too much of a violation of the square-cube law to move coherently on his own.</p><p>Even when he was sitting down, as he was now, a little shimmer around his head made it obvious that he was using his telekinesis to keep his oversized cranium up, little arcs of plasma forming between his horns, the material covered in small scorch marks. Every so often, he gestured a hand at the ground and it began smoldering with a thick, acrid smoke, sucked into the air ventilation system, before a burst of fire sprouted from the ground like a flower. This was what K-9 did for most of his day - stare at the ground and light small fires.</p><p>On occasion, he was given live prey for enrichment, but, curiously, never used the fire, nor did he eat them. No, when it came down to live prey, K-9 was much more malign in his influence. Typically, he made them run fearfully from him into a corner, watching them shriek and flee with the same glazed-over, dispassionate rictus expression, a neutral, flat face. Then, they would fall asleep, and stop breathing. When K-9 slept, their corpses were removed from the enclosure. The only thing he seemed interested in eating was straw and root vegetables.</p><p>Kankri let out a little shudder, looking at the creature in front of him, conjuring fire from the aether. The one way glass and psionic shielding meant it was impossible for K-9 to see or sense them, but Kankri still got the sense that somehow, K-9 knew he was being looked at. The agonized groaning that Meulin was making behind him didn't help, he had half a mind to-</p><p><span class="meulin">"<em>Don't you dare!</em>"</span> Meulin shrieked. He snapped his head to look at her, face covered in a thin sheen of fear. Meulin's body was twitching and jerking behind him, legs clenching together every so often, breath hitching. It would sound almost lewd if it wasn't so distressing, as she slowly, spasmodically rose to her feet, knees buckling inward every couple of seconds. The air around her head was wavy, like it was superheated, and Kankri could hear the slightly familiar sound of crackling psionic waves radiating off of her, sparking with green light against the nearby electronics. Her eyes snapped open, full of some kind of malicious lust that he could barely place as any sort of human emotion, his body locking up against the table.</p><p>Meulin stumbled towards him, one foot at a time, her ankles occasionally twisting awkwardly like she was re-learning how to walk all over again. Her neck popped as she cracked it, no longer grabbing her head, earpieces left discarded by the floor. <span class="meulin">"If you call security, Kankri, we are over! We're done. I'll never forgive you. Never forgive you. I'll never forgive you. Never. Never forgive you."</span></p><p>Kankri tried to say something in response, but his mouth wasn't opening. Meulin jerked her entire body towards the security camera and its lens immediately <em>shattered</em>. There was a loud crackle of electricity before it outright popped from the wall, falling dead on the floor, breaking like a candy bar upon impact. The rest of the security cameras (there were six) followed shortly after, each one destroyed by a distressed look from Meulin, followed by the ear-splitting sound of what Kankri assumed were all the audio monitoring bugs breaking at once. Then, she turned back towards Kankri, shambling forward, arms hanging limply by her sides. He tried not to look at her soaked-through front.</p><p>Purple sparks arced from her horns into the air. <span class="meulin">"Never. Never. Never forgive you. Never."</span> She repeated, eyes glazed over with purple light, entire body surrounded by telekinetic energy. Kankri could only sit there, completely paralyzed, unable to speak, as Meulin inched closer and closer, repeating those angry words. <span class="meulin">"Never forgive you, Kankri. Do you want me to cry, Kankri? Do you like watching it hurt? Kankri. Kankri. Never. No."</span> Meulin gurgled in a foreign voice, like something else was forcing itself up her throat, something with pain and fear and anger in its roaring, hissing volumes. She lurched forward, grabbing hold of Kankri's hair with one hand and pushing him back onto the table, turning him around with brutal strength that he had never felt Meulin (the unarguably stronger of the two) use on him before. He could feel bruises forming already where her other hand grabbed at his forearm, pressing him against the one-way mirror with a loud thump.</p><p>Kankri stared in mute horror as K-9's face was pressed up against the glass, centimeters from him. His face pulled up into a Glasgow cheshire beam, his mouth slowly opening up in time with Meulin's words. <span class="meulin">"</span><span class="kurloz">I CAN SEE YOU.</span><span class="meulin">"</span></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>All comments, kudos, bookmarks, and views are seen, noted, and greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading.</p><p><a href="https://discord.gg/ymB3spr">The Homestuck Content Creation Station Discord</a> (come join us and hone your craft!)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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